How Do I Heal My Heart From a Husband Who Cheated on Me?

How do I heal my heart from a husband who cheated on me and made a baby with another woman? I wish I had a sign that this baby was not from God.

Well, a couple of things.

First, in healing a heart we need to recognize that healing is sometimes a very gutsy thing and not just a tender thing. It's both.

By the gusty thing I mean, This man is wicked in what he did. He may not be wicked anymore. He may have repented, and that's wonderful and there should be a reconciliation. But it's a wicked thing to commit adultery, to cheat, to break your vows. And a baby born of that just complicates matters all the more.

So this woman should feel in her heart, That was wicked! That was evil! That was wrong! And you can tell by my tone of voice I mean she should feel it with some sense of gutsy indignation.

And I say that because that's gotta be dealt with before healing can happen in tender ways. And it's dealt with in two ways in the New Testament:

It's dealt with in hell. An injustice has been done. It will be righted. She wants to right it by clobbering the guy or damning the baby. That's gotta be held back. Another way of dealing with it that she is satisfied with must happen. And it will happen in hell. That guy will go to hell if he doesn't repent. And that punishment is more than she could ever deliver, and therefore she doesn't need to add to it. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. ... If your enemy is hungry, feed him" (Romans 12:19-20).

Justice is rendered on the cross. And if that man repents and believes the blood of Jesus will cover him. And to try to add to the punishment that Jesus received for him will be to do double jeopardy, and it will be to dishonor the Savior.

That's the gutsy level.

The second gutsy level, kind of, is that the child is not of God and is of God. It's not of God in that it was born in sin. It wasn't meant to be born that way. So, No, it shouldn't have happened! She can say that.

But it is of God in that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, and many babies have been born in sin who become godly men and women and are used of the Lord. So she should pray that the baby be saved and that it glorify her Savior and that all this wrong should be righted.

Then at the tender level she needs people to come around her and remind her that Jesus is a faithful Savior and a faithful husband. And if everybody in the world cheats on you Jesus won't cheat on you.

And get real close to Jesus, and love Jesus, and thank Jesus, and maybe then find the resources to forgive the husband. You will find them.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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